Kees Moeliker — the 2003 Ig Nobel biology prize winner who also became our European Bureau Chief, and who is better known as “The Duck Guy” has written a book titled “De eendenman” (The Duck Guy). Today is publication day. The book is widely available (but if you have trouble finding it, contact the publisher). At present it exists only in the Dutch language.
The book begins with the loud bang against the glass facade of the Natural History Museum Rotterdam that announced the sudden death of a bird that subsequently (thanks to Kees) entered the scientific literature as the victim in the first scientifically recorded case of homosexual necrophilia in the mallard duck.
The book (205 pages are illustrated with 60 images) covers a bold swath of Kees Moeliker adventures, including two that have enjoyed a certain vogue among the public: Kees’s quest to collect and preserve a specimen of the pubic louse before it goes extinct; and his investigations of the blackbird that —for the past four years — has been repeatedly and almost continually continually flying at and colliding with a particular window.